


All the Kingsmen

by Liu



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Kingsman Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Random & Short, Spies & Secret Agents, and i mean canon for Kingsman so possibly a lot of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 14:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13860117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/pseuds/Liu
Summary: Honestly I didn't think this would turn into a fic, so it's mostly a disjointed rewrite of several choice scenes from the 'Kingsman' movies into the Flash/LoT world.Posting because someone on tumblr (thanks, minny28 :D) requested that I do so. The original headcanon(s) and the aesthetics can be foundon my tumblr right here.





	All the Kingsmen

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I didn't think this would turn into a fic, so it's mostly a disjointed rewrite of several choice scenes from the 'Kingsman' movies into the Flash/LoT world.  
> Posting because someone on tumblr (thanks, minny28 :D) requested that I do so. The original headcanon(s) and the aesthetics can be found [on my tumblr right here.](http://pheuthe.tumblr.com/post/171489594682/pheuthe-but-coldflash-kingsmanau-where-joe)

Life can be a bitch.

Barry learns that lesson at eleven. He supposes he should be grateful that he doesn’t wind up in the system, but it’s hard to feel gratitude when his stomach’s churning from hunger, when the sounds of people screaming wake him up almost every night, when he sees the dark circles deepen underneath Joe West’s eyes as days go by, blurry and grey.

The only thing that keeps him going is Iris‘ smile, and he’s twelve when he vows to himself that he’ll do everything in his power to keep that smile on her face. Even if it means putting himself in the way of her bullies; even if it means getting in trouble and learning to steal so that he doesn’t have to watch Joe get drunk again because there’s not enough money to pay for the bills and the food at the same time.

Joe is trying to keep both Iris and Barry away from the worst of it, but Barry knows that Joe himself has done things he’s not proud of. They never talk about it; silence becomes a shield for both of them, keeping them at arm’s length from each other, but Barry takes comfort in the fact that he can fend for himself, that he’s not taking away anything that should’ve been Iris‘ alone, even if that vague independence comes with cuts and bruises.

And things aren’t so bad, most of the time – until one day, Barry’s not fast enough, smart enough to avoid all the cops chasing him through the shadowy alleys of Central City. He knows that he could turn to Joe for help, but the thing with not talking about certain... _activities_ is that if he asked for help, it would be out in the open, what he does and what he knows about Joe. It would cost the Wests way too much, and not everything is about the money: if Barry asks for help, Iris would pay for it by losing the trust in her father, and Barry just can’t bring himself to do it, even when he’s handcuffed to a steel table and asked the same questions over and over again.

Despite his best attempts at making a living any way he can, Barry knows he has been enough of a burden already. He doesn’t particularly like the idea of going to prison, but there’s very little he can do about it, unless he wants to rat out his friends, and that’s never been his style. He rubs at his neck in frustration, and his fingers catch on the chain that’s been there since that night ten years ago, right after his parents died in that car accident. He still remembers a man in a suit, telling Joe that it would be best if Joe could take care of the kid. Barry didn’t know what it all meant then, or why Joe got so mad.

He still doesn’t know - but he remembers picking up the pendant that Joe has thrown away, wondering if maybe, one day, it will help.

There’s a number on the back, 18.03.00, and Barry doesn’t expect much, listening to the dial tone and tapping his foot against the dirty floor. But he certainly expects more than a robotic voice announcing he’s just dialed customer complaints. He tries to explain himself, states his name and that he’s currently at a police station, that he needs help-

“We hope that we have not lost you as a loyal customer,” the voice says, dismissively, and Barry panics, gripping the phone tight. 

“Wait, wait, wait! Uh… I…. oxfords, not brogues?”

He doesn’t have a single clue what it might mean, but he remembers that phrase from the day when the man in the suit came and told him that his parents were dead. There’s silence on the other end of the line, and then the mechanical voice is thanking him again, stating that his ‘complaint‘ has been registered, and Barry thinks ‘this is it, I’m completely fucked now’.   
  
Except ten minutes later, he’s released without as much as another word, and when he steps into the late afternoon sun, he nearly stumbles on the stairs as a voice calls out to him.  
  
“Barry. My, my, look at you, all grown up. Need a ride home?”

And it’s the man in the suit, maybe a little bit more gray around his temples than he was ten years ago, but it’s him, with that smirk, with those intense eyes boring into Barry like he can read all the secrets with a single glance. He’s handsome, but he most certainly isn’t nice, and an alarm bell goes off in the back of Barry’s mind. But for some reason, despite this guy screaming ‘danger’, there’s just something about him that keeps Barry in place, watching and waiting.

“Who the hell are you?” he challenges, and the man’s smirk never even wavers. 

“I gave you that,” he gestures towards Barry’s neck, where the pendant is still hanging out in the open. Barry stuffs it hastily back under his shirt and scowls:  
  
“That’s not really an answer.”

The man pushes away from the wall, all long lines and controlled power in his ever move, and tilts his head like he’s amused and wondering what new trick Barry will do next.

“My name is Leonard Snart, and your mother saved my life. Why don’t you let me drive you home and I’ll tell you about it?”

_..._

Barry’s always suspected that his parents’ death wasn’t much of an accident. He couldn’t prove it, but he never really got over the feeling that something was seriously wrong, with all of it, with the fact that there were no bodies to bury, with the way people kept their voices a bit too hushed around him, the way he was carted off to a ‘family friend’ without ever seeing a social worker. With the man in the suit, and with the pendant he got along with a secret password.

But it doesn’t quite settle right in his brain until he watches that same man positively _wreck_ the assholes who have been picking on Barry since he were old enough to be seen as a threat to their business. They’re all pretty dumb, to push Snart the way they do: Barry’s only spent a couple months in basic training, but he’s learned enough to recognize danger when he sees it wrapped up neatly in an expensive suit. Unfortunately for them, the goons don’t have the same kind of survival instinct and Snart wipes the floor with them, in the most elegant and efficient way Barry’s ever seen. The man’s not even sweating when he gets back to the sticky pub table, finishing his beer like he never left his seat.

Barry’s never been this terrified of anyone in his life. Or this turned on, to be fair: he’s possibly a little bit in love by the time Snart gets up again, straightens his impeccable light-grey suit, and shoves his magical killer watch in Barry’s face.

“No no no, don’t!” Barry yelps, hands flying up in a gesture of surrender. “I won’t tell, I swear, I never ratted anyone out in my life!”

Snart regards him with those cool blue eyes for a second, and he lets his hand drop, only to squeeze Barry’s shoulder in what should be a reassuring gesture but feels more like a warning.

“Good luck with everything, kid,” he says and then he’s off, leaving Barry sitting among the unconscious bodies of six goons and an unlucky barkeep.

Yeah, he’s definitely a bit in love.

…

It’s a goddamn test, of course it is: when another group of goons corner Barry and demand answers as to who his mysterious savior was, Barry doesn’t even think about giving up Snart’s name. Next thing he knows, there’s a voice coming out of nowhere, calmly informing the assholes that they could get in serious trouble if they don’t let Barry go. Barry’s not sure how much they believe it, but it gives them enough pause for Barry to slip away and run for his life-

-towards a tailor shop.

“You know, I’ve never met a tailor in my life,” he says, by way of greeting, when he pushes past the glass door with the golden lettering and finds Snart sitting primly in a leather chair, sipping on whiskey that Barry would bet costs more than everything Joe has ever drunk put together. Which, honestly, is a lot. “But I’ll bet anything you ain’t one.”

Snart gives him a contemplative look, and then his trademark smirk sets in and he steers Barry towards a dressing room.

Maybe he’s gonna get a jacket out of this – fat load of good that’s gonna do him, living in the suburbs. A jacket like the one Snart’s wearing is more likely to get him stabbed than employed, but he kinda appreciates the thought, anyway.

Before he can voice his concerns, Snart meets his eyes in the large mirror.

“Tell me, Barry… what do you see?”

 _A failure_ , Barry wants to say. _A burden_. But he knows from experience that people don’t appreciate that kinda talk: it would only result in empty platitudes, in all the same old, tired ‘that’s not true’ and ‘you can be so much more’. So he frowns at his own reflection, and Snart’s, and shrugs.

“Someone who wants to know what the fuck is going on here.”

Which is exactly what he gets, along with a short speech about potential and making his life amount to more, to something _good_. Despite his knee-jerk reaction to scoff and walk away, something in Snart’s voice makes Barry stop and listen.

Something, damn the man to the deepest level of hell, gives Barry _hope_ , and that’s a dangerous commodity in the world he comes from, because nothing good ever came out of someone having his head up in the clouds of better tomorrows. He doesn’t really understand what Snart’s offering here, what it means to be ‘a Kingsman’, but he wants it, even though it sounds ridiculous and way out of his reach.

“A tailor?” he snorts, disbelieving, as his eyes slide to the sharp contrast between Snart’s impeccable suit and his own worn-out shirt and frayed jeans. He owns exactly one button-up shirt, and even that has a Star Wars print on it: why in the name of all that’s holy would Snart think that Barry could become a tailor?

But Snart’s mouth curves up in that shady smirk of his, making something ugly and hopeful stir in Barry’s stomach.

“A Kingsman agent. Interested?”

And he _is_.

…

Having whiskey poured into his lap is not exactly a pleasant experience, but it has nothing on the feeling of the world shifting and tumbling from underneath Barry’s feet when the lights go on behind the two-way mirror.

“Len?!” Barry yelps, and soon they’re both yelling Len’s name, him and Harry, still tied to the chair and desperate to find out what the fuck is going on. 

Because Barry still remembers watching Darhk put a bullet through Len’s head in front of that church, watching Len drop while Barry screamed at the screen, tears streaming down his face. 

“He can’t hear you,” Agent Green says calmly, still pointing his gun at the mirror, at Len, and Barry can’t watch this happen twice, he can’t, he  _can’t-_

“Wait!” a blonde woman in glasses (that look very much Kingsman-style) runs into the room, holding an umbrella and handing it to Green. “They’re legit, I checked our own doomsday locker and this was in it.”

Green’s expression doesn’t change, and Barry wonders if it ever really does - if he eats cereal in the morning and goes on dates with the same kind of murderous look in his eyes. 

“This is the part where you untie us,” Harry sneers beside him.

Barry still can’t keep his eyes off Len, sitting in that padded cell, white walls decorated with incredibly detailed pictures and schematics of statues, jewelry and other antiquities. 

“He thinks he’s an art dealer,” the blonde tech, Felicity, explains when they’re untied and they both run towards the door to Len’s cell. Harry sighs and runs a hand down his face, making his glasses sit a little crooked on his nose.

“That’s what he wanted to be, before joining the military. Got a degree in art history and all.”

That’s… something Barry never would’ve guessed. He can imagine Len being a lot of things, but all of them require that cutting-edge ruthlessness that’s always surrounded Len, like an aura of imminent danger. Imagining him sitting in some museum’s back rooms, examining old bracelets and antique vases… it’s ridiculous to even think about it and Barry refuses to believe it, mostly because denial’s always been a huge part of his coping process.

He practically falls into the padded cell as soon as the door opens, a smile splitting his face at the mere sight of Len, alive and well against all odds. 

“Len!” he calls, and the man turns to him, nothing but confusion and polite interest in his blue eye. Barry comes closer, spreads his arms, ready to envelop Len in the hug he’s been wishing for every damn night since the other agent got gunned down.

And Len flinches, a shadow of panic crossing his features, hand shooting up to slap Barry’s arm away.

“Sorry, do I know you?!” he asks, voice a little shaky, and Barry freezes.

“Len… it’s me. Barry. Come on, let’s go home, okay? We missed you.”

 _I missed you_ , he doesn’t say, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. Len gives him a blank look, like Barry’s a complete stranger, like he hadn’t pulled Barry out of jail and out of his less-than-great life. Like Barry doesn’t owe him everything, like Barry hadn’t spent weeks waking up gasping and shaking from all the nightmarish memories of helplessly watching Len get shot. 

Like they never meant anything to each other, one way or another, and Barry can’t bear it, can’t bear this polite, detached,  _soft_  Len who only cares about art and doesn’t remember how to kill a man with his bare hands in fifty different ways.

So when he gets an idea, courtesy of the local bartender, he doesn’t hesitate. He knocks on Len’s door, startles the man quite badly and doesn’t even feel sorry about it when he sees Len’s expression soften at the sight of the puppy.

It’s a husky, little more than a white-and-gray fluffball, with eyes the same startling blue as Len’s. 

“Would you like to hold him?” he asks, even though he knows the answer: Len makes soft sounds at the puppy as it squirms in his arms and lets the little husky drag its pink tongue across Len’s chin.

Barry silently points his Glock at the puppy’s head.

There’s a lot of yelling and Len’s terrified - it shakes Barry to the core to see Len, steady, dangerous Len, trembling and clutching the whining dog in his arms, eye flickering between the muzzle of the gun and Barry’s face, like he has no doubt that Barry would be perfectly capable of shooting not only the dog, but Len himself. It’s like a knife to the gut, this absolute ignorance of everything they used to be to each other, everything Len still is to Barry because nothing as trivial as death could stop the avalanche of feelings triggered in Barry’s chest every damn time he so much as hears Len’s name.

“Who would be sick enough to shoot a puppy?!” Len yells at him and Barry laughs, a cold, cruel sound that he’s learned from Len himself.

“You, Len, you were sick enough to shoot a puppy, remember?!”

And for a second, he thinks it won’t work, that he’ll be dragged out of here having achieved nothing except adding yet another trauma to Len’s life. But then, Len’s gaze goes unfocused for a moment and suddenly it’s like someone flipped a switch.

“It was a fucking blank, Barry! It was a blank!” he’s screaming, making Barry’s heart flip at the familiar words. Len’s good eye lights up with the rage and pain that made him who he is; his expression shifts, not enough for anyone else to notice, but Barry  _knows_  him, knows everything there is to know about this damn beautiful man, and he sees the exact moment when Len Snart the art dealer becomes Galahad a.k.a. Cold again.

“Barry,” he says, quietly, when he’s done yelling, and there’s that familiar electric charge between them again, sparks flying and Barry’s heart beating madly with hope and all those other things he never had the time to voice.

“Hi, Lenny,” he whispers and tucks his gun away, tucks himself around Len and closes his eyes against the feeling of his skin, warm and familiar under his cheek when Barry presses his face into Len’s neck. A hand comes to rest between his shoulderblades, tentative and a little shaky, but Len’s not pulling away and Barry wishes he would never have to let go.

…

Barry’s always been good in a crisis. Well, not always, but for the past ten years, he has never frozen when there was shit to be done. It’s the quiet moments afterwards he can’t deal with, when the adrenaline leaves his body and his mind whirls around in circles, round and round until he doesn’t know which way’s up, which way will get him out of the goddamn spiral he’s on.

Len settles into the sofa right next to him, not quite touching, and all Barry can think of is that the leather doesn’t even creak under Len’s stupid gentlemanly ass.

“Feels horrible, doesn’t it,” Len says, and Barry wishes he could bark that he doesn’t know what the man’s talking about, but the memory of Harry singing at the top of his lungs just seconds before getting blown to pieces flashes before his eyes, and he doesn’t have the strength to act defiant just now.

His shoulders sag, as much as the bespoke suit allows, and he rubs at the bridge of his nose above his glasses, then chucks the damn things to the table. He doesn’t want this to be on record anywhere, but privacy has not been an option ever since he signed his first non-disclosure agreement, has it, and it grates on his already frayed nerves.

Their new quartermaster has just been introduced, a man not much older than Barry himself who somehow manages to be even more abrasive than Harry was. He’s competent, no doubt about it, based on the dressing-down he’s delivered to a room full of highly trained Kingsmen: but Barry can’t help but miss Harry anyway, and feel guilty about his death.

“Your mother did the same for us, once,” Len says quietly, as if he’s not really waiting for Barry to respond in any way. “She saved four agents, myself included, together with your father.”

Barry’s not sure how that’s supposed to make him feel, and he tamps down the first instinctual wave of rage that sweeps over him. It leaves him just exhausted, and he presses his fingers into the corners of his eyes, wishing for the throbbing headache to go away.

“Does the guilt ever go away, then?” he asks, and Len’s quiet long enough for Barry to have his answer. And then, a warm hand closes around his shoulder, so reminiscent of that first day they met, or the second, really, at the pub where Len wished him the best of luck, that Barry chokes a little on the air that enters his lungs.

“I’m just so tired of everyone dying,” Barry breathes out, giving voice to the terror churning wildly in his gut for once. “I don’t know how much I can… how _long_ …”

“Do you want out?” Len asks bluntly and it startles Barry into looking at him. It has never occurred to him that leaving is an option, but if he’s learned one thing about Len – and he thinks he’s learned quite a few – it’s that the man never bullshits, and never promises things he can’t deliver.

But the thing is… even if people die, even if Barry’s still haunted by the memories of Len getting shot and now the memory of Harry standing on a grenade singing a stupid song to give them a way out… there are way more people, anonymous and unknowing, who still live only because Barry, and others like him, were there to do what had to be done.

And the heady feeling of amounting to more than he was supposed to, of saving so many despite losing so much in the process, makes it pretty difficult to walk away.

“Don’t you fucking die on me again,” he sighs in the end, and Len has the guts to laugh, the asshole. He laughs and laughs until Barry feels his own lips tugging up in a small smile in spite of the pain still cutting too close to his heart. He knows Len will never promise not to die, because that’s not a promise any of them can keep, Kingsmen or not: and that’s eventually what makes Barry lean in and kiss the laughter off Len’s lips before he can think twice and get tangled up in all the pros and cons.

Len doesn’t even startle – the asshole likely saw this coming way before Barry’s body decided to move without the assistance of his brain. His long fingers settle against the side of Barry’s neck and he kisses back, all warm and pliant and just fucking _right_.

Barry doesn’t let himself wonder how much time they got: at the moment, _now_ has to be enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on [tumblr.](https://pheuthe.tumblr.com)


End file.
